At the End
by Kitsubasa
Summary: -zombie apocalypse AU- It used to be that zombies were Hanna Cross' only problem. Now, following the death of his best friend, he's got mad science, government conspiracies, and nigh-immortal foes to deal with. He's just a little bit screwed.
1. Prologue

The last day of my life started with the squawk of an alarm. I staggered out of bed and across our tiny single-room apartment, over to the kitchen. Pancake time: it was a ritual I'd been performing for about a year by then. On any day when Hanna and I had a job, we'd have home-made pancakes with maple syrup and bananas. It was a good start to the day, something to make life seem a little less bleak.

After getting my hands covered in mixture and accidentally squirting maple syrup all the way down my shirt, breakfast was ready. Setting it down on the countertop, I sat at one of our rickety chairs and waited. Eventually Hanna was summoned by the smell. His nose was trained to hone in on a good breakfast after months of us living together.

"Mornin' Dot," a grin ran its way across his face as he looked at me through his crooked glasses.  
"Didn't burn anything today?" and there it was, the jab I'd been waiting for—a mention of my disastrous attempt at French toast the day before.

"Does it look like I did?" I replied while motioning to the perfect, golden cakes I had made.

"Good for you," trying to pull the other chair out for him to sit at, Hanna looked surprised when it fell over. He'd forgotten that one of the back legs had snapped partway down a week prior. Setting it right on the book we'd been using to prop it up, he sat down with rare caution."… We need to fix that," he said.

"There are a lot more things to pay for before that chair," I reminded him, and then motioned around the room. Hanna sighed, rolling his eyes and slumping down on the table.

"You don't need to remind me. Broken blinds, busted light, rent to pay, smoke alarm, the fridge isn't working right and we've got pests running around. Hanna, despite normally being fairly careless, at least recognized that we had more pressing needs than comfortable chairs. "We should be able to knock rent off the list after today, at least."

The job—yeah, it was routine. We would help out with a sweep of the outer walls, getting rid of anything in our way, checking numbers and reporting estimates back to the Horde Analysts. While we were at it, we also had to make sure there weren't any mutations popping up. Pretty much every hunter in the area had been called up to help out, since we hadn't done a citywide check in months. In return for our service, we would get four hundred—in cash—for the day, and be allowed a free restock of hunting supplies. The latter reward didn't really mean anything to Hanna and I, since the two of us weren't into firearms like the others, but the money was enough to draw us in.

"You know," Hanna's voice took a suddenly serious tone. "I bet you used to be rich." There was a momentary pause. We both understood what he meant by 'used to be', but neither of us wanted to say any more about it. Pulling himself off the splintered countertop, he picked up his cutlery and began to chisel into his pancakes with the blunt knife.

Breakfast soon turned into a quiet conversation—about how Hanna's laptop was always crashing, and we needed to get a Queen CD sometime because Hanna hadn't heard 'Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy' in forever and Hanna this Hanna that. I liked how we focused both our lives on him—it made things easier for me. It felt like, if I adopted a personality and opinions and a life, then someday my past would find me and it would be disappointed that I had shut it out. The cleaner I kept my slate during my time with Hanna, the easier it'd be to leave him when it came to an end.

As the morning drew to a close, we both got dressed in our work clothes: Hanna, for once, was trying to look impressive, decked out in a spotless white shirt, suspenders, a waistcoat—the works. I, however, just wore my usual clothes. It felt awkward, standing next to the usually messy man and finding me the less formal one, but I shrugged the sensation off quickly. At midday, Hanna and I grabbed our weaponry and left our apartment for the outskirts of town, dodging our landlady—Mrs. Blaney—as we went, fully aware that she wanted her rent and she was not above killing us for it.

"So, you excited?" Collapsing at the bus stop outside the building, Hanna bounced his hammer up and down in his hands. The hammer was his weapon of choice during our hunter exploits—silent, fast, deadly, and he'd drawn a purple insignia on the top of it that made it seem almost enchanted. Where others in our line of work went for guns and bombs, Hanna and I operated on the principle that melee weapons were better in the one-on-one situations we found ourselves involved in much of the time. Guns made noises, noises attracted more of the creatures, and ultimately firearms would lead to more trouble than we cared for.

"Excited isn't exactly the word I'd use," I fiddled with my crowbar—my answer to Hanna's hammer.

"But… close enough, I suppose."

"Think things are going to go wrong?" I didn't admit it, but that was exactly what I thought. "Look, don't worry. We're Dot and Cross—we can take 'em."

"Yeah," I smiled falsely. "I'm sure you're right." But I was far from sure. My gut danced itself into knots and warning bells were sounding loudly in my ears; from the moment that I replied to the moment that the bus pulled up, five minutes later. Climbing on, Hanna and I were met by a mumbled query from the driver, asking what our weapons were for. Flashing our hunter licenses, we made our way to the back row of seats and dropped down onto them. The bus ride was long and slow—a million gentle corners and meandering roads. Something about it was fascinating though... seeing how time kept ticking on, despite everything that had happened in the past two years.

As we drifted out into one of the artier districts of town, the outer wall sprang up, suddenly visible. For such an important thing, it seemed tiny: just five or six meters of thick concrete, separating us from the wastelands. It was a strange division, to be certain, stuck smack-bang in one of the up-market areas of town, creating a weird break between one set of Art Deco apartments and another—but that's how events like that go, I guess. You can't just say that the apocalypse is going to end at a less abrupt point of land, any more than you can tell the apocalypse not to happen in the first place. Creaking into place at the roadside, Hanna and I clambered off the bus and took a moment to look at the surrounds; the wall, the buildings, the eerie tranquillity of a city abandoned. The outskirts of town, near the wall, were a place rarely visited for fear of a retraction of the limits. If a wave of the monsters broke through, the walls would have to be rebuilt closer in, and no-one wanted to be trapped outside if and when it happened.

Taking slow strides towards the wall, Hanna and I noticed a group of hunters gathering near a small, white, temporary pavilion. Adjusting our direction slightly, we headed towards them, curious to know who else was working the job. We thought maybe we'd luck out, and Lamont would be there, or Casimiro and Finas, even. Lamont was a close friend of Hanna's who worked as a hunter, but moonlighted as an illegal weapons dealer—among other things—and the main source of our firearms, when we decided to use them. Cas and Finas were a hunter duo, like Hanna and I, who were practically joined at the hip and obsessed not with protecting the city but with causing as much chaos as they could outside the walls. They took their job for a love of carnage: nothing more, nothing less… or at least, Casimiro did. Finas' motives were somewhat more ambiguous, but Hanna and I assumed he had to at least somewhat enjoy bloodshed if he kept a berserker like Cas around.

Sadly, no-one we knew was hanging around this section of the wall—which, in the grand scheme of things, was unsurprising: over ten pavilions had been set up around the city to adequately service each area and make sure they were all covered by similar numbers of hunters. Lamont would probably be further to the north of the city, and Cas and Finas tended to hang around the western gates. Hanna and I were almost smack-bang in the centre of town, so we had the freedom to choose whichever entrance we liked—but they'd recently put out a notice saying that this area would likely be understaffed, so we'd come out here.

Approaching the pavilion, we pulled out our hunter licenses once again. Nearing a polished wooden desk that had been set up by the entranceway, we showed them to an authoritative-looking woman in a grey suit, who sat at a silver laptop. "Dot and Cross Exterminators, at your service," Hanna said, shunting up his glasses and trying to look reliable. The woman typed in a series of words, and then, with a 'ding', released her fingers from the keys.

"So, you're Hanna Falk Cross and Dot Redfield?"

'Dot Redfield' was not my name; at least, not before meeting Hanna. He'd had invented it on the fly one evening, after a horror movie marathon and some drinks. He'd decided that Redfield was 'the ultimate hunter surname', and that Dot 'just worked', and that had been that. Lamont — ever the helping hand, with his underworld contacts — acquired a false ID for me and paperwork with that name plastered all over it. I had never been completely convinced that the name fitted, but c'est la vie, Hanna is as Hanna does.

"We certainly are! Ready and waiting for orders," Hanna's mock-salute was met with a roll of the woman's eyes.

"Head over there, grab any equipment you need, and you'll get told what to do soon enough," I nodded to her and then walked in, Hanna for once not leading the way, instead following close behind. On one side of the tent was a massive display of weaponry—from butterfly knives to shotguns—and on the other was a table set up with several coffee makers and an array of cups. About twenty or so other hunters were loitering around the area, examining various things, checking their guns and tapping their feet impatiently, waiting for action.

Group hunts were frustrating—it was an indisputable fact. You had to wait for everyone to arrive before beginning, go along with any mass strategy that your fellow hunters came up with, and Hanna and I were often put on the sidelines thanks to our unusual choice of weaponry. This one was already set to be especially exasperating, thanks to it being a city council affair. We were expected to follow all sorts of rules and regulations, being the representatives of the government's efforts to remove the undead menace from the perimeter of our city… at least they paid well.

Meandering towards the table, I made two cups of coffee, and gave one to Hanna. We then drifted off to one side, putting ourselves out of the crowds, not really wanting to socialise with the others. Sipping at my drink, I surveyed the room, watching to see what kind of people we were working with.

A burly man with hair a similar colour to Hanna's was eating sandwiches in the centre of the tent, with a set of pistols tucked into holsters at his waist—he looked inexperienced. His fingers were twitching nervously, and his eyes darted about, flashing open and closed. It was probably only his second or third mission—something in me felt almost bad for him, actually, being dragged out here despite being so new to it all. I guess that the council really had been scraping the barrel for recruits. After all, they'd invited Dot and Cross Exterminators, despite our iffy track record.

In direct contrast was one of the men shuffling around the weapon racks. Wearing layers upon layers of clothing, goggles, and a blue surgical mask, he seemed like the picture of the perfect hunter. In his hands was a rifle, which he was loading with bullets, each movement of his fingers precise. Efficient and clean… everything Hanna and I weren't. Suddenly I noticed movement on one of his shoulders, as something uncurled itself from him and raised its head, sniffing the air… a ferret. Naturally, he turned out to be as crazy as the rest of us.

As time ticked on, five or ten more hunters wandered into the area. The characters appearing were many and varied; tiny girls wielding massive guns, smartly-dressed men with crossbows, scrawny women carrying first-aid kits and swords. The pseudo-apocalypse the outside world had undergone had prompted some bizarre things in the remaining human populace, leading many people to quit their day jobs and take up fantastical lifestyles—Hanna included. He'd once mentioned to me that, up until two years ago, he'd been working at Target, just a clumsy sales-assistant.

When the end came, some people stopped trying to get by, thinking it was all some sign from God that we should stop living and just wait to die. Others decided to do the opposite and live it up, do everything they'd ever wanted to do and just have fun before the undead swarmed and killed us all. And then you had us—the hunters. We were a strange mix of people, coming from opposite ends of the social spectrum. There were your archetypical daydreamers, who viewed the hordes as a chance to finally live their gaming dreams and hunt monsters for cash and then there were the athletes, the body-builders and the warmongers, who just wanted to use their physical prowess to re-kill people for a living.

Standing in a tent like that, mixed among the hunter subsets, was a strange and entertaining experience. By the time our hunt coordinator stepped onto the tiny wooden stage at the back of the tent, I had seen somewhat Amazonian women chatting with guys almost as tiny as Hanna, among other oddities. It was almost a relief when the organiser began to speak, dragging my mind off the weird social mechanics of the hunters.

"Hello," he said, his hands draped delicately across the microphone. He struck me as somewhat strange, dressed up in bizarre Victorian-era clothing and accompanied by a very much audible ticking noise, coming from a pocket-watch tucked into his vest. "My name is Ples Tibenoch, and I am in charge of the sector two sweep. We'll be starting in just a few minutes, once I receive notice of the gates being raised, but until then, I'll go over some basics for today.

"As you all know, you will be performing a sweep of the south-east sector of the city perimeter. Your job, first and foremost, is to get a rough estimate of the number of undead we currently have gathered within a one kilometre distance of the outer wall, though you are definitely encouraged to take out any that get in your way. Secondly, any obvious mutations in the horde are to be dealt with immediately, and then reported to the council upon re-entry,

"While the city council hates to interfere with your methods, we do request that you all strive to remain quiet when you are near the entrance to the city, as in the event that the creatures come too close to the gate, we will be forced to close it. If this occurs, there will be only a two minute interval between the order to shut them and the gates closing completely. If you don't make it in time… well," he trailed off. Fidgeting uncomfortably with his pale grey arm-spats, Ples avoided eye contact with the crowd. There was something in that shuffle, that strange uncertainty that told me to be wary of him. Shunting his glasses further up on his nose and giving a small sigh, he continued speaking. "In any case, I hope you have fitted yourselves with weapons as you require. We of the council are here to aid our hunters in anything and everything you do to keep our city safe. Many thanks to you for your co-operation in our efforts to save the city, and I wish you all the best of luck!" Giving a small bow, Ples stepped off the stage to quiet applause from some of the people in the crowd.

"Phew, sounds like we're nearly ready to begin," Hanna grinned, nudging me in the side. "You ready? Don't want to nab a gun before we head out?" I shook my head weakly, still haunted by Ples Tibenoch, for reasons that I couldn't fathom. He was a council everyman – with his nicely-shined shoes and his button-up vest – but there was a slant to his words that made me suspicious.  
"Oh, okay," Hanna responded, ignoring the fact that I was ignoring him. "So what's our plan of attack for today? Wanna band together with some of the other hunters? 'Cause I think I saw Dalley Endo over by the sandwiches and he's kinda cool, plus he has a shotgun so he could help up picking them off from a distance." Hanna continued to list reasons why we should have teamed up with Mr. Endo (one of our acquaintances from another group hunt), until eventually a speaker mounted on one side of the tent crackled to life.

"All hunters proceed to the gate to exit from the city; I repeat, all hunters proceed to the gate to exit from the city."

Ples Tibenoch's voice drifted in and around us, causing Hanna to snap into life. "It's time, it's time! Oh man, I hope this all goes okay… Dot, don't forget to watch my back," Raising his hammer, he grinned.

"Like I ever would," I replied, running my hands anxiously along my crowbar, beginning to walk towards the exit of the tent, merging into the forty-strong crowd of hunters. Hanna scurried along at my side, his grin slowly fading into an expression of slightly-fearful anticipation. No matter how many times you pass through the gates to go hunting, it never gets any less tense—you're still putting yourself at the mercy of thousands of undead that want nothing more than to eat your flesh, and that's not going to change any time soon. You might die in the effort. You probably will die in the effort, if you don't stay on edge all the time.

Coming to a halt at the gate, Hanna and I watched it slowly rise, the entire crowd silenced by the tension. For the one thing keeping us from the monsters, the gate was surprisingly underwhelming—only a little larger than the size of an average doorway, and cursed with a raising mechanism that moved at a snail's pace. Around the edges of the wall, spread around the city, were nine other gates like this, each one equally important. The gates were all under constant guard from city officials, armed with all manner of guns and taking constant watch from small towers placed on top of the wall. The guards were something of a blessing in hunts like this, actually. When you first stepped out, you could be certain that you would have some protection, at least until you turned a corner or otherwise got out of sight of the snipers.

That day, they had upped the gate-guard to eight people—the council had recognized that they would need to keep the gates open while everyone went about their duties, and that in doing so, they needed extra defense to prevent any pesky undead from slipping through. As the gate rose high enough for an average human to exit, a small gaggle of hunters rushed out, desperate to get going with their work. Almost immediately, I heard a gunshot from above, followed by a yell of surprise—one of the guards had saved one of the hunters.

The gate clicked into place as it finally pulled up the entire way, more and more of the hunting party filtering through into the outside world, until only four or five of us were left inside the city. Hanna shifted his weight between each of his feet, anxious to get moving, and as the people in front of us sprinted through, unblocking the entryway, he grabbed my free hand and yanked me forward, fast as a lightning bolt. "C'mon, Dot! Let's go hunt some zombies!"

Rushing forward, through to the outside world, I was almost stunned as I looked around and saw the state it was in. No matter how many times I went between the city and the outside world, it never ceased to frighten me. Despite being made from the same asphalt and concrete as the area inside the walls, it seemed to have adopted a different colour — a grey overtone coated everything, choking out all the life it could've contained. Broken neon signs hung off sad buildings, their cables snapped, but not sparking. Power had been cut to this district after it was overrun by the undead, leaving it as a static place. This area was as dead as its inhabitants.

But Hanna, of course, didn't want to take the time to notice this, and he continued to pull me forwards, past cars with shattered windscreens and bloodied interiors, past a still fountain… past everything he didn't want to acknowledge. "We should check out that street up ahead," he called out to me, releasing my hand and allowing me to fall back into my own, slightly slower, pace.

"Why?" I hefted up my crowbar, realizing that we were starting to get far away from the wall—and therefore, the watchful eyes of the guards.

"'Cause I didn't see any of the others go down it, which means easy pickings for us!" Swinging himself around the corner and into the street he wanted to look at, Hanna let out a whoop of excitement. Following after him, I felt my heartbeat still as I came face to face with a stretch of pavement thick with the undead.

Our… 'zombies'… were not entirely like the ones in the pre-apocalypse movies. For starters, rather than turning pale following their death, they adopted a greenish tint to their skin. Their eyes burned a brilliant orange, and if you had the misfortune to encounter any at night, you'd see that the orange glowed. They ambled about, like any fictional horde would, and they would happily swarm you if they got the chance, but they weren't enamoured with brains — oh no. They would go for any bit of flesh they could take, and just one bite was enough to seal your fate. That was why hunting was such a dangerous profession, and why, despite our city having hundreds of thousands of people in it, we had less than six hundred willing to go out and slay the monsters.

Naturally, though, Hanna's reaction to their appearance wasn't one of fear — it was one of joy.

"Jackpot!" He shrieked, raising his hammer, pointed end facing towards the horde. One of the creatures jerked up as Hanna's shout registered with it, and lunged towards my tiny friend — but despite his less than intimidating appearance, he had never been bad at the 'slaying' part of his job. Slamming the hammer down into the zombie's skull, Hanna let out a whoop of excitement.

"Be careful," I knew he wouldn't listen to me, but I figured I should say something anyway. Three or four more creatures launched themselves at Hanna, but he quickly disposed of them all. That was as much as I got the chance to watch before one sprang at me, taking my mind off my partner's wellbeing and onto my own. With a sweep of my crowbar, I batted the zombie away, and then threw down a finishing blow into its head. That was one thing consistent with pop culture: you had to get rid of the brain.

Onto the next contestant: what once had been a teenage girl leapt at me, only to be beaten back with a solid smack to her jaw, and a follow up blow. Meanwhile, Hanna dealt with another cluster of zombies several meters away from me—crushing their heads with his hammer, a grin on his face as he tore through them. Neither of us looked on them as anything more than a nuisance. It hurt too much if you started to consider them as maybe being human—and that pain was what would slow you down and convert you into another one of the horde. And that in itself was an irony—the fact that if you considered for a moment, what it would be like to become one of the undead, then you were likely to be bitten and turned. You could understand and perish or turn a blind eye and live.

Hanna and I spent another ten or twenty minutes cleaning out that street, and by the time we were done with our job, we had found another path to go down. The next area was thinner—an alleyway would have been the best way of describing it. There were less zombies, but they were packed in more densely—a challenge for us. But still we set on them like we had the last group: a blur of crowbar swings and skulls caved in from heavy-handed hammer blows and—

Suddenly a siren began to shriek, and in the distance we heard a loudspeaker crackle into life. Someone's voice, Ples' voice, shrieked out illegible phrases over it.

"What's up?" Hanna paused in the middle of bludgeoning one particularly stubborn zombie and turned to me, apparently thinking I'd know what was going on.

"I don't know," I replied. Hanna shrugged, and delivered the finishing blow to the creature. We both continued with our work for a few more moments, until Hanna jerked up, his eyes shining with some unvoiced realization, and made a sudden break towards me. Grabbing my arm and tearing me away from the zombie I'd been fighting off, he dragged us out of the alley and onto the main street again without an explanation. "Hanna!" He didn't respond to me yelling his name, except to give me a worried backwards glance.

"Hanna, why are we running?" I tried to ask for a reason again.

"The gates," He choked out his response, and I felt my body fill with ice. Of course—the gates were closing, and we had to get back: or die trying. Letting go of his hand, I continued to sprint alongside him, now spurred on by my own fear of death. Tearing around a corner, he and I found staring out at the gate closing, painfully slowly, roughly two hundred meters away. There wasn't a moment to lose—somehow, I squeezed a little bit more power out of my legs. We had thirty seconds, tops, before we were shut out and left for dead. About ten meters away from the gate was the corpse of a zombie—probably the one that had set off the alert—and another ten meters back were a trio of them. The guard-tower echoed with gunshots as the people within worked to get rid of the zombies, but they must have been panicking; their aim was miles off.

Shooting past the zombies, Hanna and I began to close in on the gate, watching the last stray hunter pass into the city. It was just us left—and there wasn't much room for us to crush through. Those last, precious moments became a millennium as I realized what would happen. Each footfall became slower and heavier, fatigue catching up with me and causing me to slip behind Hanna. We entered the final five meter stretch.

Hanna ducked down, and squeezed through the small gap between the bottom of the gate and the ground. Pausing once he reached the other side, I heard his breaths catch, and saw his legs turn around. "Dot, c'mon! There's not much time left, get through!" He demanded. I gathered myself up, ready to make a dive for it.

Then teeth sunk into my shoulder, and I pulled back. I let out a howl of pain — guttural and animalistic. Hanna suddenly let out a scream to match mine, as he realized what was happening.

"Get off me!" I yelled, even though I knew the zombie clamped to my shoulder wouldn't listen. Its hands tightened around my upper arm as it tried to pull me even closer to it. Passing my crowbar to my free hand, I started waving it around near where I thought the zombie was in the hopes of hitting it. Not that it would matter if I did. It was already too late.

"Goddamnit, stay away from Dot!" Those were the last words to filter through before the gate closed with an anti-climactic click. Clenching my teeth together, not allowing myself to feel the pain—of losing Hanna, of being bitten, of knowing certain death was on the way now—I turned around and finally pulled the zombie off me, then threw it back. Slamming my bloodstained crowbar into its head, I didn't feel the usual excitement bubble up into me as it fell away. All I felt was dread. Soon, I would be one of them.

There was so much I had wanted to do with Hanna and I was already dying. I had wanted to go and buy that Queen CD with him. I had wanted to hold his stepladder steady as he fixed the broken light in the kitchen. I had wanted to laugh again with Lamont over drinks as we talked about unsuccessful hunts. I had wanted to find out more about my past. And suddenly all my wants and needs were stripped away and I was left on my own, with two zombies near me to be taken care of so I could at least die in peace. Peace? No, it wouldn't be peace, because I'd have Hanna to worry about. I'd worry about whether or not he'd remember to do the washing and pay the bills and ring Casimiro and Finas for help sometimes so he didn't go overboard with his hunting.

The first of the remaining zombies was thrown down quickly, a hole in its head. The second took longer, but still, I managed. There — my immediate goals were complete. Was I going to lie there and say goodbye to the world? No. I realized that my blood would be luring zombies already, coursing through my bite wound like that… I had to get further away from the gate. So, as a last duty to the city I had given my life to protect, I forced myself to walk away, down the main street, as far away from the gate as I could manage. As soon as they noticed my wound, the guardsmen fired at me, knowing I'd be dead soon, but all their shots missed. They were still shaky from the gate threat, and they all felt hesitant about firing on a human being. It was kind of nice to know that someone under the council's thumb was still empathetic.

Turning down the first alley I came to, I began to succumb to the virus. My eyesight blurred and my muscles went weak. And then, on the third door down, everything in me faded out: I tumbled to the ground and let out a low moan as my life came to an end.


	2. Aftermath

"I hope this is sufficient," with a grim smile, Mr. Tibenoch passed me my money. "I slipped in some extra as consolation for… your partner." His voice echoed off the wooden paneling that lined his office, the last words hanging in the air for a little longer than I would've liked. I thought of Dot.

"Thanks," I replied, shaking away the memories and climbing to my feet. Mr. Tibenoch folded his long, monochromatic arms, and shifted back in his chair, a stretched shadow. He was so formal—it was like he had stepped out of the 1800s. I felt underdressed and exposed in his office. Marble and mahogany everywhere, carved into patterns and statuettes. Dot would've liked it, but I fit in like a clown in a funeral home. I was too bright. Way too bright. "Look, I have to get going. I promised I'd meet some friends at a bar, and then I need to get home and pay the bills. Thanks for being so helpful."

"And thank _you_ for accepting our apologies, Mr. Cross," I didn't think I had, but I wasn't going to make a scene. Wherever the blame lay—the council or the zombies or Dot or me—causing a ruckus about what had happened wouldn't do anything. "Few people understand the pointless nature of grudges like you seem to."

"Uh, okay. Well, bye," wandering from the room, I closed the door quietly behind me and frowned. I wasn't in the mood for congratulations or praise for my apparent apathy about Dot's death. Besides, I was a lot more torn up than Mr. Tibenoch thought. I wanted to kick something, or get way too drunk and wake up with a mind-numbing hangover. I wanted to stomp out of the city and bludgeon every zombie in a ten mile radius. But I couldn't do that yet because, like it or not, life goes on, and, as I had said, I needed to pay bills.

The trek back across town to the bar I'd agreed to meet Casimiro and Finas at took a comfortably long amount of time. I might've ended up lost, once or twice. I didn't particularly care. That was just how I dealt with things… I mean, when my parents died, I'd just kind of sunk into my shell for a while to cope and then after a few weeks I came out fine again. I supposed I'd just cycle through that and then come out brand-new. After all, I had Lamont and all my other friends to look out for me, so it'd work out fine.

That's what I told myself, at least.

Shoehorning a spring into my step as I finally found where I was meant to be, I began to prepare myself for meeting with Cas and Finas. They probably wouldn't be sympathetic about what happened, so I had to pretend that I was equally unaffected. They weren't exactly the kindest friends to have around. Pushing the door open and stepping into the bar, I—

"Hanna, goddamnit!" – I was confronted by a surprisingly worried-looking Casimiro. "We have been waiting _forever_ for you!"

"Sorry, I ended up a little bit lost on my way but I got here in the end so it's okay, right?"

"Do you realize how much we were freaking out? Damn, kid, we thought something had happened to you," taking me by the shoulder and leading me to a nearby table, he sat me down firmly on a stool, and then took the seat beside me. Finas nodded silently from across the table at me, before taking a sip from the beer in front of him. Sliding me a full mug of beer, Casimiro lifted one of his own and then solemnly said: "Alright, let's skip straight to the important part. All drinking we do tonight is in the honor of Dot Redfield, the most hardcore awesome of hunters. May we never forget his alternative uses of a crowbar, and his strange ability to make orange look good."

"Amen," Finas agreed, staring down into his drink solemnly. "He was a good friend."

"Good doesn't cover it, man. Like, remember that time he busted us out of that pack of zombies just before you could get eaten?" I had to admit, I was a little bewildered by how much Casimiro and Finas cared. I'd always sort of assumed they'd been friends with Dot and I more out of professional interests than genuine like, but as it turned out, they really had enjoyed having us around.

"He panicked when he saw your eye after that, kept saying that it was his fault for not getting there in time. For all that cold facade, he was more caring than the rest of us,"

"Yeah… He was always there for us, wasn't he? And that doesn't even start to cover how he looked after you, Hanna," around about then, I started to cry, as much as I didn't want to. Cas and Finas were just taking everything in their stride, rolling with the punches and trying to keep Dot's memory alive and I was just… shit. I couldn't take it: outside confirmation that he was gone. "Hanna? Aww, shit, kiddo."

Surprise, surprise: Cas wasn't half as caustic as he pretended. Slinging an arm around me, he tried to give a comforting smile, but it came out all wrong. "Look, it's fine if you need to cry. Finas and I're cool with it. I mean, if I died, Finas'd be a wreck, right man?" Finas raised an eyebrow. "We understand." I looked up at Casimiro's face, checking to see if he was sincere. His good eye—the one that hadn't been scratched out by the undead—showed a strange sort of helplessness, the kind you see in the parent of a crying child.

"I'm sorry guys," I finally spluttered. "Like, I just haven't had any time to think over the past two days and I'm totally out of it and… fuck. Fuck, Dot is gone. It doesn't seem right."

"It never seems right," Finas said, brushing Cas' arm off me and glancing at him as warning against moving towards me again. "That hole inside you isn't one that'll fill easily. I understand." It was true: he did understand. Finas' wife had been killed during the initial outbreak of the horde, leaving him bitter and alone until Casimiro swung into his life and got him into hunting. Every now and then, he brought her up, talking about how they had once wanted to move back to Finas' home in England and have a family.

Dot and I had had kind of similar plans. We'd wanted to catch a plane out to this other city, just a few hours away, where my uncle and cousins lived—whenever I phoned them, they told me how there weren't as many zombies there. We'd actually started saving for tickets a few weeks before—

Another wave of muffled sobs coursed up through me.

"Just let it out," taking another sip of his beer, Finas stared up at me through half-closed eyes. "No-one here'll care. Everyone's heard about all the deaths on Monday. They'll understand."

"… Goddamnit," A breath gushed out of me. I suddenly felt like I could talk openly about Dot and my worries, hearing what Finas said. I gritted my teeth together and peered down at the tabletop. "What am I meant to do now, guys? How can I keep hunting without Dot?"

"You could join with us," Casimiro suggested. "I mean, Finas and I could always do with back-up."

"For once, Casimiro is telling the truth. You're welcome to join our team if you want, Hanna."

"Thanks, guys, but no thanks," I waved my hands dismissively. "I mean, think about how we'd have to split the payout if there were three of us?" Like it or not, I needed all the money I could get from the rare jobs hunters were offered. My crappy little apartment was surprisingly expensive, as was food and water and power for two people.

Damn it, I had to stop thinking about living with Dot. He wasn't there any more! I had just been talking that over with Finas and Cas! Damn it, damn it!

"Suit yourself, Hanna. Oh, hey, maybe you could go with Lamont?" Oh, hah, man. Lamont.

"Only if I want to get stabbed in the back," I said. Dear Lamont, whose loyalty belonged to whoever had the fattest wallet. Of course I'd love to team up with Lamont, who would gladly ditch me in a tight spot if it meant saving his own neck. He'd sort of earned a name for himself around the hunter circles, 'Suicide Lamont', because that was what you were essentially committing if you trusted him too much. He was a good friend, but not someone I wanted to have watching my back.

"Or Dalley?"

"Dude. No-one knows what Dalley is like. He might turn out to be some freaky berserker," the most any of us could say about him was that he used to be a baker, before his shop got caught outside the walls and he went all hunter on everyone. Apparently, he used to make delicious cream puffs.

"Don't make me suggest… _her_," 'she' was Adelaide, Cas' ex and a crazy-skilled hunter. Word on the street was that she was looking for a new partner, but everyone was too afraid of her to step up to the task and I don't blame them because seriously? Adelaide was _batshit psycho_.

"She… she's a stronger possibility than the others, but I'm not jumping to work with her either,"

"And people say that you're just a reckless little kid, Hanna. Looks like you have some sense of self preservation after all," Casimiro smirked proudly at me.

"If there was a Venn diagram of people who've worked with Adelaide and people who are currently alive, the two circles wouldn't overlap," Finas chimed in. He liked Adelaide about as little as Casimiro did, though he wasn't as vocal about it. Finas' distaste for her stemmed mostly from the fact that she had taken some of his CDs and his first-edition copy of one of the Lord of the Rings books when she left Casimiro. Petty theft was just the cherry on the top of her crimes.

"Not gonna disagree with that, man!" Casimiro called. "I mean, half of the time I think she must murder them all herself. No-one else could run through that many partners that quickly. I'm lucky I was just her partner in bed, I guess. Not that that didn't cause its own pains."

Casimiro spent another good half an hour slandering Adelaide, bringing up everything from her stupid too-tight underwear to the fact that her last boyfriend smelt like lemon-scented air freshener. It was almost enough to take my mind off Dot and the empty space he'd left in every aspect of my life. When I got home that night – if I got home that night (I was thinking of just going and chilling at Cas and Finas' apartment, since it was closer and it was getting late)—it would be dark and the lights would be out. I would be alone.

Casimiro's ranting was peppered with orders for new drinks, as the three of us slowly doused ourselves in alcohol and tried to forget our problems. Bills to pay, no-one to love, dead parents, parents in Florence, broken cars, crazy exes… it all felt so normal. I broke down periodically, when we hit too close to Dot's demise. So the night wore on.

When I woke up the next morning, half of my memories of the past evening were gone, but I was safe on Casimiro and Finas' sofa, which was a massive relief. So much for a quick drink, eh? The two hunters had been merciful and kept the curtains closed, so my hangover wasn't as bad as it might have been. I spent a good fifteen minutes chugging water and looking around the kitchen for painkillers. Cas walked in at some point and called me a pussy, then told me he didn't have any.

"So what're you going to do?" Was the big question of the day, offered up to me by a quiet, dignified Finas, sat at the kitchen counter eating a croissant. He'd smothered it in jam and I was massively jealous when he bit into it. It made me want Dot's pancakes: weirdly, thinking about that didn't hurt as much as it had the day before.

"I'm going to go it alone for a while, I guess," I tried to look sure of myself as I spoke.

"Good luck keeping alive, kid," Casimiro called to me over the roar of the kettle as he prepared to make Finas his customary daily cup of Earl Grey. "You know the life expectancy for solo hunters."

"Yeah, well, I kept it up for like a year on my own before Dot came along!" Finas flipped open a newspaper, but the systematic glances he shot me showed that he was still paying attention to the conversation.

"Touche," Cas fell silent as he looked for a comeback, but soon seemed to give up, directing his attention to the tea. Rummaging through the cupboards, he eventually found the teabags and then pulled out a mug with cartoonish cow on it. Pouring Finas his drink, he handed the mug over to his friend and then smugly muttered, "You get the cow cup, Finas, because you were a massive cow last night to that chick who was hitting on you."

"All I did was turn her down, Casimiro," he sipped calmly at his tea. "Not all of us would jump on anything with breasts."

"You just-!" Casimiro let out an aggressive noise, midway between a growl and a shriek, and then turned back to me. "So, Falk, you should probably head home soon. It's getting towards midday and Finas and I have hunting to do in a couple of hours." His voice had gotten snappy and he actually looked sort of serious for once.

"Hey, don't worry about me, I'll be out of here ASAP," I assured him, and then rushed off to the sofa I had woken up on to try and look for the jacket I'd been wearing the previous night. After some rummaging, I found it shoved half-under a nearby chair, its orange-and-black pattern poking out just enough for me to see. Pulling it on, I felt a sharp pang of upset as its coloration finally registered with me and once more that torturous thought came to my head: _this reminds me of him_.

Swooping through the kitchen again, I waved a hurried goodbye to Finas and Cas.

"Godspeed, Falk Cross!" Casimiro called through a mouthful of toast.

"See you around, Hanna," Finas said, and then flicked the paper up to hide his eyes once more.

Once I was out of their apartment, on the skinny open-air balcony the looped around the outside of the building, I took in a deep breath and then forced myself on. There was something distinctly lonely about ditching my two friends, heading home to nothing much. But, that loneliness was kind of relieving in a way, because it meant I could finally get to mourning in my own style, one that wasn't like Cas'. It had been refreshing to do all that crying but it hadn't gotten rid of the ache, and that's what I was really desperate to dispel.

It was a five minute walk to the bus stop, then a twenty two minute bus ride to my stop, then another six minutes on foot to get home. When I looked up at my building, I gave a grunt, feeling a sensation deep inside me that said it had gained a greater lean since I'd last been there. Probably just my mind playing tricks, but it did seem off somehow.

Wandering into the reception, I produced some of the bills from my back pocket and placed them on Blaney's vacant desk. Leaning over onto it, I grabbed some of the paper from her notepad and a pen, and scribbled a message: _Hanna Cross here, that's the rent I owe from this month and last month. _Pushing all the objects towards her computer, I then pivoted on one heel and tried to exit, only for someone to catch me.

"Falk, that your money?" Mrs. Blaney drawled. When Casimiro called me Falk, it was affectionate and friendly. When Blaney called me Falk, it was grating and spoken in an all-too-smug tone, like _hahaha I am your evil landlady, prepare to be broke from trying to maintain the shitty apartment I have gifted you_. I'd asked her to call me Hanna before, but she'd argued that the girl in 401 was called Hannah and there couldn't be two of us here, too confusing. Mr. Cross, my second choice, was out, because she couldn't make that sound inferior. So I was Falk. And I hated it.

"Yes?"

"Last month's too, I hope," she swirled her burnt-out stub of a cigarette around between her lips, her eyebrows simultaneously doing a dance. Her face was turning into some kind of South Pacific tribal ritual.

"Of course, Mrs. Blaney," she terrified me and what was worse than that was the fact that she knew it.

"Good. I won't be throwing your things out, then," letting go of my shirt, she took a seat behind her desk and then motioned for me to keep walking. After I had taken just a few tense footsteps in the opposite direction, she called out: "Where has Dot gone?"

"Killed at work. Zombies. You know how it goes," I replied.

"I'm sorry," and she actually meant it.

The journey up the stairwell to my apartment didn't take long, but the walk down the corridor did. The closer I got to it, the more hollow I felt—empty like someone had cut down my chest and scooped my insides out. When I finally eased the door open, I stared into my apartment like it was some foreign land. Papers were strewn everywhere, and there was a tipped chair in the center of the room. I remembered the day Dot died: how I had bumped the chair over that morning, but I couldn't have been bothered to set it upright.

If I had spent a moment fixing it, maybe a butterfly effect-type thing would've unfolded. We would've run into Mrs. Blaney on the way out, and she would've held us up, telling us off for not paying the rent. We would've missed the bus, and been late to the job, and by the time we had gotten through the gate the hunt would've been close to its unfortunate end. Dot and I wouldn't have strayed so far, and we would've heard the alarm and rushed back in with so much time to spare. He would be alive.

It didn't go like that but I liked fantasizing. Not to burden myself with some kind of weird guilt, but to just consider all the million ways things could've been right. A bit of escapism, or whatever—I picked the chair up and sat down on it. The room held all sorts of chores I needed to do: tidying, packing Dot's stuff up, checking my voicemail, paying the internet bill… I decided to look at the voicemail first.

Three messages: one from the library, telling Dot he had a book overdue. One from Lamont, saying he'd heard about what happened, condolences, yada yada. The last was from a girl called Toni Ipres, apparently hiring me to do something.

"There are noises from upstairs," she said, and I was kind of excited because _gnee_, not often a girl asks for my help. "Groans and gasps and… look, I think I have a zombie here and I know that's impossible because I'm inside the city but please, come and take a look. He practically sings whenever our lead misses a note. All our nerves are shot and we just need your help. I'm at the Ives Theatre, on Hutton and Bradford. I don't have much money, but I can shout for dinner? Goodbye!"

A case? I had a case. Something about that thought made me smile and shit, it felt good to be smiling. A case to keep me thinking and get me out of the apartment that night and stop me from sparking out like an untended fire. Fuck—fuck yes! Hanna Falk Cross had a case and he was going to do well—alone or not.


	3. Look Alive, Sunshine

Without warning, I was awake. There was a sickening jolt in my stomach as I considered that fact, going over it again and again in my mind to try and figure out how it could have happened. I had been bitten by a zombie and I had survived. Maybe it had all been some kind of nightmare? My eyes flicked open and I glanced about, hoping to see Hanna and my quaint apartment, but instead I was greeted by an unfamiliar room.

The walls of the room were a clinical white, the only things that seemed clean around me. On a table to my right was medical equipment, soaking in disinfectant—though I had doubts that the chemicals were doing anything. Blood was slathered onto every tool on the table, brown and black and red, caked on like dirt. My gaze lowered to the ground, and I saw a similar sight down there. What kind of person owned this place? The answer to that question hit me not a moment later: and I mean that in a literal way.

"Fuckin' hell, it's awake!"

Smacking me across the face with something hard, the speaker stumbled back from me. Twisting around to see him, still reeling from the blow, I squinted and clasped my forehead, gritting my teeth against the pain. As I began to recover, I was able to make out a blurry off-white shape. "Oi, Connie! C'mon, where'd ya put the gun?" Calling back to someone, the figure kept away from me. As my vision cleared, the white blob became a lanky man, probably in his thirties, with short blonde hair and a cigarette dangling disdainfully from his mouth, puffing out smoke. Looking him over, I discovered that he had stolen my crowbar. "Shit, Conrad! Any day now would be great!"

"I can't find it!" A British voice barked back from outside the room.

"Whaddaya mean, 'can't find it'?" The blonde man replied, nervously yanking the cigarette from his mouth, dropping it to the floor and stomping it out. "Check the desk!" Throwing my legs over the side of the operating table I was lying on, I sat up and rubbed my forehead, trying to ignore the dull ache developing. Glancing my way, the blonde man's eyes widened.

"Shit—shit—shit! Conrad! It's getting up!" For the first time since he'd started speaking, I considered the fact that the man might've been referring to me. Getting to my feet, I staggered towards him, trying to assure him that I wasn't going to hurt him, ask what was happening, calm him down: but I was unable to find my voice

Without warning, a door clicked open behind the man and a hand was stuck through it, offering him a gun. Taking it, the man began to raise it towards me. Finally, a single word rolled off my tongue—"Stop," I commanded

An emotion somewhere between shock and relief flashed across his face. Both the crowbar and the gun clattered from his hands onto the floor, and his mouth formed a grin. "Worth?" The British man called out again. "Worth, why didn't I hear a gunshot? Look, if you're getting mauled or something I'm not coming to save you."

"Conrad," Worth quietly replied, taking a hesitant step in my direction. "You've gotta come'n take a look at this." The door opened again, and from it stepped a slight man with glasses. I looked him over. While at first glance he looked like tidy, any further scrutiny of his appearance revealed blood spatters against his fancy white shoes and a distinctly wild bent to his hairdo. Conrad recoiled a bit as he saw me standing there, but nevertheless closed the door behind him and stared at me.

"He's not trying to eat us," Conrad, it seemed, was some kind of genius who could state the obvious with unparalleled skill. That said, his observation begged the question—why were they both so amazed that I was walking and talking? I had a feeling I knew why, but I didn't want to acknowledge it.

"What are you two talking about?" I asked, figuring that was as good a point as any to start demanding answers. The grin on Worth's face gained a strange edge to it—a twisted mix of sympathy and amusement.

"Aww, bless the poor bugger," he folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't even realize he's dead."

Suddenly the possibility that I hadn't survived rang out louder, but that had to be wrong, because then wouldn't I just be mauling these two? Part of me knew that I was right, that I was one of the living dead, but most of me argued against it. I desperately wanted to be human, wanted that enough that I convinced myself I had to be.

"You're lying," I said. "I'm alive."

"Guess I'd be lyin' to m'self too, in your shoes." Worth replied, his eyes shining deviously.

"It's not a lie. I'm alive,"

"Really?" Striding forwards, Worth came to a halt a small distance away from me, and looked me up and down. Slapping a hand onto the left side of my chest, he looked thoughtfully away for a moment, then laughed and resumed his twisted grin. "No pulse, green skin, glowing eyes." Pivoting on one heel, he motioned to Conrad.

"What's the verdict, Connie?" After a moment of stillness, Conrad shook his head anxiously and looked in my direction.

"… I'm sorry," he muttered.

"And we have our conclusion!" As he turned back to face me, Worth's face was void of the remorse you'd expect when telling someone they had died. "As such, ya can call me Worth. I'm a doctor—or somethin' like that." Without missing a beat, he pointed to Conrad.

"And that's Conrad Achenleck. Ain't a doctor, but he's pretty handy 'round here in his own way," still too stunned to really question what had happened to me, I moved on to an easier question.

"… And where is 'here'?"

"Ya know how ya collapsed in an alley prior to yer ever-so-unfortunate demise?" I nodded cautiously, wary of Worth. He didn't seem like the best person to be around; though whether it was the nonchalance towards my death or the dubious claims of being a doctor, I couldn't tell. "We pulled ya off the doorstep of this place and brought ya inside after ya blacked out."

"You two live outside the walls?" I felt a light frown crinkle across my brow. "That's impossible."

"That's what I would've said too, until a few months ago," Conrad pulled his glasses off and rubbed them gently against the fabric of his vest, a meek smile appearing on his face. "But there are things the council keeps from us, apparently."

"Ya shoulda expected that. Both of ya," reaching a hand into a pocket, hidden in the lining of his coat, Worth drew out a packet of cigarettes and raised one to his lips. The flash of a match came soon after, and he was smoking again. "I mean, what else is a government for—keepin' secrets, martyring dumb civvies and collectin' taxes."

"You make them sound like some kind of mafia," I replied. While I had never exactly liked the council, I'd at least trusted them—enough to accept the occasional job I'd been hired to go on with Hanna.

"They might as well be. I'm out here cause'a that lot."

"Did they abandon you?" I asked, somewhat aware that it wasn't a likely explanation. Whatever reason Worth was out here for, it was a reason that required him to have access to power and a fully-equipped surgery.

"Me? Naaah. Conrad though, yeah," he looked expectantly at the man in question, as though asking him to explain more.

"I got stuck here when those council bastards shifted the walls closer in about six months back," folding his arms, he scowled, his shoulders tensing.

"My fault, technically," Worth chimed in. "Council wanted someone to do their dirty work 'n' find a cure for zombie-itis. So, after getting a fat pay check, they built me a surgery on the borderline of the walls, pulled them closer in and then said 'fuck ya' ta anyone stuck outside—hipsters like Connie here, mostly."

"And so here I am, stuck with some masochistic doctor and his strange-ass experiments," Conrad shot a glare in Worth's direction.

"But that can't be right. They pulled this bit of the wall back because the hordes got through,"

"Geez, didn'tcha hear the part about the council lyin' through their teeth?" Worth let out a hoarse laugh. "Experiments're happenin' anywhere they can find shady enough doctors. Walls're getting' pulled back fer kicks. And idiots who think they're 'bove it all—like you and Connie—are getting' dragged into shit they never even imagined." Suddenly, something clicked on inside his brain and a burst of thoughtfulness registered on his face.

"Speakin' of experiments, what kind of funky stuff didja have done to ya 'fore ya got here?" None. I'd never seen the inside of a surgery before arriving at Worth's, except on TV. Maybe, in the long-forgotten decades leading up to my arrival at Hanna's, I'd had something done to me, but it wasn't anything I could remember.

"You're the first doctor I've come face-to-face with in years," I said, completely straight-faced, not wanting to give away my uncertainty about my past. Hanna and Lamont were the only people who knew about my amnesia, and I wanted to keep it that way.

"Sure?" Worth somehow picked up on my hesitation regardless. "Well, tha' jes leaves more stuff fer me ta figure out."

"Do you think I've had something done to me?" It was an unsettling thought, considering that I might've been the victim of some kind of mad experiment.

"Yeah, but I won't know fer sure 'til we hit the city and use s'ma their equipment," it was unusual, because I felt like I should've had some rush of energy telling me to get excited, but there was nothing. Further proof of my state as one of the deceased, I supposed.

"We're going into the city?" A chance to reunite with Hanna, a chance to find out more about what the council had been doing, a chance to go drinking with Lamont again, a chance to—be shot in the head and killed by some paranoid citizen. A zombie wouldn't go down well with the inhabitants. Hell, a zombie wouldn't go down well with _Hanna_. My stomach sank as I mulled over that thought.

"Told the council I'd come back in when I got a thinker. Yer a thinker, and I'm sick of Conrad's whining. Put two and two, Zombie," I didn't know whether to be excited or scared. From the sound of it, Worth had proper arrangements for getting in and getting around, but assuming I didn't get killed on-sight, what would happen to me? No—no, taking it too fast. I had to slow down; I was getting ahead of myself. Talking about going back to the city before I'd even completely grasped the idea of being outside of it and being…

"Zombie? Is that your new nickname for me?" One of my eyebrows shot up.

"Unless ya got a better suggestion for what I should call ya, then yeah," Worth said.

"Dot Redfield," I told him; surprisingly firmly considering I'd never really connected with it as a name before. Worth snorted, plucking his cigarette from his mouth for a moment, and eying me like I was crazy.

"Cruel parents, givin' ya a name like that. Dot's a girl's name," was I the only one in there that didn't love redundant statements? "Ah well, guess ya can't help it. Life's life, and ya name's ya name." Spilling smoke out from his mouth, Worth went silent for a few moments, deep in thought—before making a sudden break across the room.

"Shit, I was s'posed ta call in a progress report to the boss earlier—Connie, look after the dead guy for me," the door closed with a click. I stared at 'Connie', who flinched away, his gaze directing down to the floor. His mouth crinkled into an anxious expression.

"… I'm sorry about what happened," he tried to force a smile, but failed. He became even more interested in his shoes. "Worth thought that you might end up like this, since you were out for so long after changing. I mean, normally it all happens so fast, but…" He sighed, and finally looked me in the eyes, but only for a second.

"You took so long to wake up. We knew you had to be different," pushing his glasses further up on his nose, they blocked out his eyes, the surgery lights reflecting off of them like a mirror. I caught a glimpse of myself in them—my glowing orange irises. "Hey, Dot, what happened before you got here, anyway? I mean; I might be kinda rude asking that but… still."

"No, don't worry, it's not rude at all," I wasn't sure whether or not asking a man how he died was considered an intrusive question or not. "I'm a hunter by trade, as I guess you've figured out. They sounded an alarm and started closing the gates after some zombies got too close, and while my partner and I were trying to get back through them I was bitten."

"That's… awful," I thought of Hanna's screams as I disappeared behind the wall, and couldn't help but agree. It _was_ awful—for my partner.

"Lots of awful things have happened thanks to the virus. My partner and I have seen far worse things than my death, over our time together,"

"I don't think that could be true. Nothing could be worse than watching a close friend die," Conrad's expression seemed distant at that moment, his expression tightened into a light frown. "… except maybe dying. I wouldn't know."

"Being dead isn't too bad so far," I replied, trying my best to give a reassuring smile to Conrad, who had started to look guilty for some reason. As I revealed my teeth, he once again threw his attention to the ground.

"Everyone's going to be afraid of you when we get back into town," he told me, and it was no lie. "Won't that be painful?" I couldn't answer that: at least not aloud.

"… Sorry for asking," Conrad finally said, after the pause had extended a few seconds longer than he was comfortable with. Luckily, before another lull could interrupt our conversation, Worth burst in, a grin spread across his face.

"They're taking us back in,"

"When?" was Conrad's immediate reply. He jumped to his feet with his eyes lit up like stars.

"Any time tomorrow, I just have to phone an hour or two ahead,"

Everything was going much too fast for me, but that's life: you plod along at a steady pace, and then before you know it you'll be caught up in a whirlwind. I wanted to just lie down and go back to being asleep again, maybe forever, if that was what it would take to be left alone. But, in my new unlife, I had doubts that sleep would come easily to me, if at all… and as such, all I could do was look from Worth to Conrad, wondering where I'd be lead next.


	4. The Return

Striding into the Ives Theatre, I was startled by the bright lights that shone onto the stage, illuminating its inhabitants. Seven or eight people were milling around, with one blonde girl complaining loudly at one of the male cast members. I sort of figured it was some kind of student production—that at least explained why Toni hadn't been able to promise my full fee over the phone.

"Hello?" I called out to the people onstage. "I'm looking for Toni Ipres…?" A Hispanic girl jumped off the stage, yelling something that sounded sort of like 'oh, that's me'. Within moments she was directly in front of me, and her friends were back to talking.

"You're the hunter, then?" She said with a smile, showcasing brilliant white teeth. The blue lipstick she was wearing stood out against her dark skin. She was more than a little gorgeous. "I thought there would be two of you."

"My partner, uh, he ran into some trouble when we were out of the city the other day and—"

"Say no more. I understand," Toni gave me an apologetic look then launched back into smiles and conversation. "So are you the Dot or the Cross in Dot and Cross?"

"Cross. Hanna Cross," I said, then offered her a hand, trying to seem professional.

"Hanna. Cool name for a guy! Different," she took my hand and shook it firmly. "So, I guess you want to know what's happening here, then."

"That'd be useful, yeah,"

"Up there," pointing to the back wall of the stage, Toni waited for me to direct my attention to the right place. "We keep hearing noises from up there. Scratches, howls – you know; zombie noises."

"When your lead sings, right?" I asked, remembering back to her phone-call like a pro'. _Cross, you are slick. A++, keep up the good effort._ I could do this job just fine without Dot, definitely.

"Yeah: I mean, it pipes up other times too but mostly just… when she opens her mouth," Toni leaned in close to me. "No offense to her but she's kind of loud and kind of sharp all the time."

"Ahkay. I get it," opening up the messenger bag I had slung over one shoulder, I pulled out my hammer. "So, you want me to get it out of here?"

"Pretty much," Toni began to twirl a strand of her hair between two fingers, continuing to stare up at the back wall. "It's just that I don't know where the entrance to that part of the theatre actually is. There are all sorts of boarded walls around the back – Kelsey and Jared and I tried to look around once and it was all blacked out. It's a total maze." Her attention darted momentarily to two of the people onstage as she listed names, cluing me in to who she was actually talking about.

"Alright, so late-night roaming through a possibly zombie-infested out-of-bounds theatre all for some free dinner," I summarized. Toni looked guilty and uncertain, before I added: "All in a day's work for Hanna Falk Cross!"

"I'll come back there with you," she said, her cheerful attitude picking back up again. "It's dark and I guess you don't have a flashlight."

"You got that right," I'd lost it months back, when Dot and I were dealing with a midnight call out at the east side. Someone's brother had gotten bitten after travelling the airport road, and we'd had to take him out—and half the rest of his family. Some people just don't learn that it's a bad idea to come back into the city after you've been bitten. All it does is get more people killed.

"I'll go get mine from Jared, and then we'll go," Toni dashed back down the aisle and climbed up onto the stage. After a few words with a blonde guy, she was heading back my way with a little blue flashlight in her hands. Nodding to me as she came to a halt, she passed me the light. "Alright, I'll lead the way." Before we could move, a groan echoed through the theatre, followed by the eerie sound of nails on plaster. A shriek signaled the end of the scratching, about ten seconds later. I turned to Toni, whose face had gone pale.

"That's him," she said. "That's our zombie."

"Yeah, I sort of gathered as much," puffing my chest up and flicking the light on, I grinned at Toni. "Don't worry, Cross is on the case! I'll get your theatre un-haunted in no time." Toni smiled wearily.

"I'm so glad you're able to help," leading me out the front entrance again, to the cloudy night I'd come in from, Toni glanced up towards the glowing patch of sky where the moon was hiding. She stilled for a moment, looking pensive, before gesturing to our right. "If we head down the alleyway just over there, we'll find the door."

Slipping down the shady alley, I noticed the door—it was kind of hard to miss, actually. Massive planks of wood had been hammered into place over it, and a sign saying 'keep out' had been hung on.

"Is that stuff new?"

"Sort of. Those boards were there for a long time, but then we took them off a few weeks ago to explore—only we forgot to put them back on afterwards. When the zombie showed up, we decided it was probably best to use them to keep it in there,"

"Smart move. Or, I dunno. Maybe a little redundant," Toni turned to me, one eyebrow raised.

"Why redundant?"

"Oh, c'mon. Zombies can't claw through anything thicker than someone's skin—it's not like they've got superpowers or anything. You didn't need to worry about them breaking through," immediately after speaking, I realized that it was probably dumb of me to lecture a client like that. Getting all stuck-up is _not_ a good way to promote your services. Toni'd probably be right on Twitter or Facebook or something, laughing about the dumb, nerdy hunter she'd hired. Tappity-tap-tap, pretty blue nails on plastic keys. Career, meet toilet—ride that water like a slide 'cause you're going down. My face turned red.

"I never knew that," she muttered, looking a little bit annoyed with me.

"Uh, it's—" common knowledge really, but did I want to dig myself a deeper hole? "—it's not something most people know about them. Don't worry." My mouth crinkled into an awkward, guilty smile.

"… Just get the boards off, Mr. Cross," Toni told me, still annoyed.

"Sure thing, Miss Ipres," putting the torch away, I raised my hammer into the dim light of the moon—it was a pretty standard-issue one, with a bit of rust on it here and there. It'd been my father's, prior to the outbreak. "Looks like it's lucky I brought this." Setting to work on prying out the nails, Toni stood watching me, her head cocked to one side.

"… Why the hell did you have a hammer in your bag, anyway?"

"I kill them with it. The zombies, I mean. It's kind of a memento of some stuff that happened to me a while back, so it feels appropriate to bash them around with it," tossing a nail to the ground, I began work on the next one.

"Isn't that really dangerous? Trying to kill zombies with—"

"A hammer? Oh, sure, yeah. I know people that've died trying to do it," second nail down, two more to go…

"Then why would you keep using it? Why not a gun, or something?"

"Well for starters, my cousin Vic shot his toe off with a gun when he was five so I'm not all that keen on them. And I'm like, super unco'—so it'd be more of a death sentence than going melee," the last two nails came off easily. Lifting the plank out and throwing it down onto the ground, I started on the next one. "Not to mention the fact that I'm way too broke to afford bullets. And prior to a few days ago, I did have back-up with the whole home-renovation-weaponry thing." Accidentally jabbing my hand with the sharp end of the hammer as I slid it under a new nail, I winced.

"I'm sorry if I hit a nerve with this, but… what was your partner like?"

"… He was cool," I started to take a bit more care with the nails, a little bit unhappy with how my hand was stinging. "Really tall. Watched my back like my life was more precious than his. Smacked them up with a crowbar. I miss him." Despite being more cautious, I still managed to hit myself again: this time, I accidentally swung the tail of the hammer into my chest as I was pulling one of the nails out.

"He sounds like he was a nice guy,"

"Nice is putting it super-mildly. You have no idea," another board was thrown out, leaving only one more.

"Why do you keep doing this job, anyway?" I froze.

"… It's complicated. A lot of promises, and a lot of mistakes. Scars that won't heal. Besides, it doesn't pay too badly if you're good at it," I laughed dryly, thinking about my profession. "'Good at it' generally means staying alive more than a month, though, so yeah." I took a deep breath, and kept pulling nails out.

"Oh. I had no idea it was so dangerous,"

"It's not that bad if you've got someone watching over you," and maybe I could still hope for that: maybe Dot was some kind of guardian angel for me now? It warmed me just thinking about it. Anything for him to protect me again. Anything.

The last nail came out, and the last board came off. I twisted the handle, and opened up the door. We were in. Turning on the flashlight, it was my turn to lead Toni.

"If you see orange light, then don't make a sound—just tap me on the shoulder, and point in the direction I should be looking. It's how we'll know we've found our guy," I took a step inside, my breathing shallow. My hammer was at the ready. The hunt was on.

The first thing visible when we came in was a long, dusty hallway, with thinning green carpet lining it. The walls chattered with the sound of rodents. The perfect haunted location? Totally. Toni and I took small, hesitant steps, both of us freaked out by the atmosphere. The darkness and the corridor combined to give a very claustrophobic feeling to both of us. Locked in a dim space with a zombie—what a horror-movie-esque concept. I wished I had Dot there for probably the fourth or fifth time that night.

Once we reached the end of the corridor, we found a fork in the path—to the left were signs indicating a series of dressing rooms and to the right were unmarked doors, and a staircase in the distance. I turned to Toni, but she shrugged, indicating that she wasn't sure which path was the correct on—so I took the left. Approaching the first dressing room cautiously, both of us startled as we heard a shriek from above. The zombie.

"Wrong direction. Let's go up," I said, and suddenly felt dumb for having done so because holy crap was it redundant or was it redundant? The two of us moved swiftly back down towards the right end of the corridor, where a sturdy old staircase lead up into the darkness. Staring up it, I fiddled around with the torch, trying to shine it just right to see what—if anything—was at the top of the staircase, but when I finally got the angle correct there was nothing to be seen. Still, I'd have to keep my guard.

Taking steady steps upwards, I prayed to whatever deities I could think of that there weren't any hardcore-creaky steps, because I didn't want to go dragging the zombie nearer before I was prepared. Luckily, we reached the top with nothing more than a few quiet wheezes from the old wood to give us away. Zombie hunt was go.

Now moving even more carefully than before, I moved towards the first door in the upstairs hallway. Opening it slowly, I glanced around within—but there wasn't any light, orange or otherwise. Next door: blacked-out storage room. Third door was more of the same.

The fourth door led to a large room where the lights were blazing. I didn't have time to notice anything more than that, because a pale green shape lurched at me and secured its hands on my shoulders. The zombie's mouth opened wide towards my face, and Toni let out a momentary yelp of surprise.

I wasn't about to be eaten. Grabbing the front of the zombie's jacket, I pushed with all my might and forced him off me. As he fell to the floor, I was able to get a better look at him. He had blonde hair with a fringe that stopped just short of his eyes, and he was wearing a simple, tidy outfit—the kind of thing you go out drinking it. Maybe he'd been having a good night, until he died. Actually, no, scratch that. A guy having a good night doesn't end up in the abandoned wing of a theatre, brutally murdered.

Spattered all down his face, and his shirt, and tangled through his hair was blood. It had dried out into fine crisps of varying colors, clashing against the dead, green tinge of his skin. Someone had bludgeoned him to death with something—god, I don't know. A baseball bat, maybe? Someone had killed the poor guy in cold blood, and he'd been left to come back as this… thing. But how? You could only be turned by bite, or by direct exposure to the virus that'd started all this stuff: through a needle or the like. Things weren't matching up. I was starting to feel way out of my depth—like I'd discovered something I wasn't meant to know, or understand.

But me being me, not knowing something just makes me _want_ to know it. As soon as I'd dealt with the zombie, I intended to do some sleuthing. I'd always wanted to be a PI.

Creeping to his feet, the zombie began to stagger at me again, just as determined as before to get a bite of me. That's probably the saddest thing about zombies: unlike people, they'll never give up once they've set their mind on something. Once I saw a hunter outside the walls taunt one of them for a laugh. She kept on waving her arm in front of it, after she'd shot out its legs. It'd snap up at her, she'd jerk back, cackle some more. I watched for two or three minutes, trying to understand why she'd do something like that, but no amount of staring could explain to me what her motivations were.

You get hunters like that, sometimes. They get into the job just so they can have some fun with corpses. Make them jump around and bark at you—like a poor man's version of the seal show at Seaworld. They were cheap entertainment, unless you got bitten, in which case they were as pricey as anything could ever be. I'd heard stories about people getting bitten by them after taunting them (mostly from Casimiro, and mostly regarding Adelaide's partners) and as cruel as it was, I kind of thought they deserved it. Mocking a dead body, zombie or not, is just not cool.

The zombie jerked towards me suddenly, spittle dripping between his open jaws. Spiking the sharp end of my hammer into his shoulder, I kicked him back, determined to get on the offensive. Behind me, Toni stood with her hands crumpled into fists, watching me fight, completely stunned and unable to do anything but draw in sharp, ragged breaths. If our earlier conversations hadn't made it clear, her actions now sure did: she'd never seen a zombie up-close and personal before. I kind of regretted taking her up here, even if I did need her as a guide: she didn't need to see the corpse. The stench in the air, the sight of the zombie's bludgeoned head; this was a world she didn't belong in and I'd exposed her to it. That thought made me feel sick to my core.

I landed another shot to the zombie's shoulder area, only narrowly missing the head this time. The creature reeled, and then came at me again, extending its arms to make another grab. I dodged, and slammed my hammer into its other shoulder as it flew past me… only to realize I'd accidentally let it close in on Toni. As little as I wanted to get it too close to me, I had to save her; so I grabbed the back of its collar and pulled it towards me, jabbing my hammer into the back of its neck at the same time. It squeaked and whimpered in pain, like a wounded animal. Some people think zombies can't feel anything, but they're wrong—while their sense of pain is dulled, it's still there. They know when you've landed a good shot. The only problem is, hitting them hard doesn't incapacitate them… it just makes them angry.

Snarling and lurching in to get a bite out of me, the zombie was getting a bit too close for comfort; until suddenly it wasn't. The lights in its eyes flickered like broken bulbs, but that wasn't because it was dying. Something else was going on, but I wasn't sure what. For a short second, the orange glow changed to sky blue—then again, darting in and out, in and out. A rave in someone's eyeballs, almost. At last, it settled back on orange, and the zombie howled.

Slumping in towards me, it tried once more to tear a hunk of my flesh out, but I caught it by the shoulders. It was time to end it. Throwing my weight onto its upper body and kicking its legs out from under it, I pulled it to the ground. Getting on top of it, my knees on either side of its chest, I kept it pinned. It writhed and groaned, trying to wriggle out of my hold. No way was I going to let it free. I raised my hammer, ready to deal the final blow—the sick feeling of guilt already welling up inside me.

"Ah!" I nearly dropped my weapon in surprise as Toni shrieked out, completely unexpectedly; but somehow at the last minute I found the resolve to hold on strong to it. She was just reacting badly to watching me 'kill' something—that was all! I had to get rid of the zombie.

"Goddamnit Hanna, stop, he's still alive in there!" It wasn't Toni that said that. I didn't register whose voice I had heard until two seconds later—when the hammer had already been stuck firmly into the zombie's forehead. Just before my blow landed, the creature's eyes flickered back to that human blue, though this time, they looked as though they were going to stay there. He exhaled slowly then somehow spoke:

"No… don't kill me," but it was too late. My hammer sunk in, leaden in my hands, and I turned to see who had tried to make me stop: though I already knew perfectly well who it was.

Dot stood before me, different from when I had last seen him: but only on the outside. I could see immediately from the horror in his glowing, orange eyes that he still had all his feelings, and all his thoughts. His skin might've been green, and there might've been wisps of white hair gathered into wings on each of his temples, but he was still Dot-fucking-Redfield and he was still looking at me like I'd betrayed him somehow.

I had betrayed him, yeah. I'd killed the zombie—who evidently was somehow able to communicate like a normal human—just like I'd been specifically told not to, and as I raised my hammer slowly from its head I knew exactly what it looked like. It looked like I was going to kill Dot too. He froze with his hands limp at his sides, and his eyes wide. The only thing moving was his mouth, making shapes and trying to find the words to say to me.

"… No," he said. "Lee—you—he was still alive. Hanna, he was still alive. Why would you…?"

Something must've clicked in his mind, because at that moment a shudder of understanding passed through him and he bolted out the door. I got to my feet as fast as I could, and shot off in pursuit.

"Dot!" I shrieked, running full pelt through the rickety old building after my recently-deceased best friend. "Fuck, Dot!" A faint orange figure pulled around the corner in front of me, silent save for its footsteps. As I turned, the light of the moon shone outside the open doorway ahead of me, illuminating Dot's tall figure as he threw himself through it and into the night.

I tried to catch up to him, but by the time I reached the alleyway, he was gone—and I couldn't see which way he had disappeared to, or hear his shoes slapping against the pavement. My breathing was erratic and heavy, and my heart was fluttering like a hummingbird. At some point in time, Toni came to my side, holding my bag, and the torch. I didn't take them from her. I didn't say anything to her. But she understood well enough why.

I'd scared off my best friend, I'd killed a man, and I'd opened up a million questions: the most pressing of which being—what the hell was going on?


End file.
